I met Pham Thi Hoai yesterday, by dropping in on her apartment- I made the mistake of thinking her magazine Talawas actually had an office! She is lovely to talk to with the assistance of my father- her english is like my german. She is devoting all her time to Talawas and has not written fiction for a long time. She said she needs to be in her own world to do that and there are other things in the world to worry about than her own problems.  Talawas has also picked up on the story of the monks and nuns in Vietnam in Bat Nha.  She made some comments about the lack of news coverage in Germany on Vietnam, and said it was harder to get published in Germany as an Asian diasporic writer than in Australia. She has read the Boat by Nam Le which has been translated into German- loved the first story but the rest did not touch her. She has kindly offered to show me Vietnamese community in Berlin and will come to my reading on November 4 at the Literaturwerkstratt.

She also told me that the East Berlin Vietnamese community from the North and the West Berlin Vietnamese community from the South do not talk to each other. She had also heard about the pho dogs (see my article in issue 6 of Peril at www.peril.com.au)

I went to the Berliner Philomoniker last night which was brilliant (of course) and saw more museums with my father who is in Berlin for two days.  The dali museum has inspired me to try and adapt a form of writing that is more jagged, subconscious and surreal in terms of narration- which I will write more about once I’ve started trying it.